Charlotte Hamrick

Something About SW

You were the throw-away boy, the misfit captain of the football team and I was a bored not completely committed spaced-out belated flower child. We would make out in the cramped back seat of your Mustang where the heart necklace my last boyfriend gave me ended up ground under your heel on the grimy floor while you grunted and pushed and popped my cherry. I didn't mean for things to get that far, it just happened before I knew it while I was looking out the window at the Big Dipper. For your birthday I gave you a blue tank top and a string of individually wrapped cherry suckers and your slimy cousin said, "That's not what he likes to suck" and you both giggled like little girls, like I wasn't even there. And I wasn't. One day you got tired of going to school and decided to join the army. You started talking about how we'd run away and get married and travel the world on Uncle Sam's dime, then one afternoon you picked me up and said "Today is the day," just like that. Like I didn't have a say in the matter. I looked out the car window and saw a red and yellow kite riding the air currents free, untethered and beautifully independent and I told you I was too young to get married. Even at 16 I knew forever was longer than my attention span.

CP

Charlotte Hamrick lives in New Orleans where she often scribbles words and phrases in notebooks that later becomes poetry or flash. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has been published in several lit magazines including Metazen, The Rumpus and Red Fez. Her original poetry and other occasional writing can also be found on her website, http://zouxzoux.wordpress.com/.